East Bay trash workers strike for 5 hours

EAST BAY

Updated 8:23 pm, Friday, March 15, 2013

East Bay garbage workers waged a five-hour strike against Waste Management early Friday, saying the company illegally retaliated against employees involved in union activities by firing them for not proving their status as legal U.S. residents.

Trash pickups were halted when hundreds of picketing workers gathered at 3 a.m. outside Waste Management's Alameda County headquarters on 98th Avenue in East Oakland, the Davis Street Transfer Station in San Leandro and the Altamont landfill. They returned to work at 8 a.m.

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Waste Management spokesman David Tucker described Friday's strike as an "unsanctioned labor action."

"Any interrupted routes will be completed on Saturday," he said. "We ask that customers keep their cans at the curb, and we'll come get it."

The strike affected Waste Management operations in Alameda County, where the company serves Albany, Emeryville, Oakland, Hayward, Castro Valley and part of San Lorenzo.

Merrilees said there were no immediate plans for another strike. In 2007, Waste Management locked out its workers for 28 days, leaving piles of trash to accumulate around the East Bay.

However, Merrilees said, "if the problems with Waste Management's abuse continue, then there's likely to be some variety of consequences to the company, including jobs actions like today's."

Attorneys for the union said the dispute dates to December, when they said Waste Management retaliated against union members amid contract negotiations by researching their residency status.

3 workers fired

The company ran the workers' names through E-Verify, an Internet program that confirms one's eligibility to work in the United States, union lawyers said. By law, companies can check E-Verify only to determine the status of new employees, they said.

Three workers who participated in a strike-authorization vote were fired the next day after Waste Management supervisors told them their immigration status was unsatisfactory, said Peter Saltzman, a union attorney.

"It was intended to send a signal to an almost 100 percent immigrant workforce that they'd better not engage in concerted union activity like that," Saltzman said.

Tucker denied that Waste Management had misused the electronic service or fired the workers improperly.

"E-Verify is the law of the land," Tucker said. "All workers of Waste Management, myself included, have to provide proof of documentation that they can work. Nobody is being targeted for E-Verify."

Employees warned

Tucker said the terminated workers had been told when they were hired that they needed to complete additional paperwork to prove their status as legal employees. An audit in December showed the employees had never done so, he said.

"The assertion that it's being used to target and intimidate people is a false statement," Tucker said. "It was an unfortunate chain of events that overlaid one another."

Attorneys for the fired employees would not divulge the immigration status of their clients, but noted Waste Management had initially hired them.

"The employer has a responsibility under the law to ensure the status of their workers is legal when they first walk through the door," Merrilees said. "They could be implicating themselves and suggesting they didn't follow the law initially."

The E-Verify system is voluntary for most employers but mandatory for the 170,000 companies holding federal contracts and for their subcontractors.